Everett Fox


Everett Fox is a scholar and translator of the Hebrew Bible, a graduate of Brandeis University. He is currently the Allen M. Glick Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies and director of the program in Jewish Studies at Clark University.
Fox is perhaps best known for his translation into English of the Torah. His translation is heavily influenced by the principles of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Buber in 1962 completed their translation of the Hebrew Bible into German. Fox co-translated their Scripture and Translation into English with Lawrence Rosenwald of Wellesley College. The main guiding principle of Fox's work is that the aural aspects of the Hebrew text should be translated as closely as possible. Instances of Hebrew word play, puns, word repetition, alliteration, and other literary devices of sound are echoed in English and, as with Buber-Rosenzweig, the text is printed in linear, not paragraph, fashion. He has argued for the superiority of Biblical translations that preserve or reflect such Hebrew forms, and pushes English farther than does Robert Alter, whose translations are motivated by a similar appreciation of the character of the Hebrew original.
Fox's translation of the Torah was published in 1995 by Schocken Books as The Five Books of Moses. Fox continues to translate, and in 1999 published Give Us a King!, a translation of the books of Samuel. His translation of the complete Early Prophets was published in November 2014 as The Schocken Bible: Volume II.
Fox served as a religious consultant on the making of the film Prince of Egypt. In the 1970s, he and Cherie Koller-Fox co-created a board game called "Expulsion: Jewish Life in Spain from the Golden Age to 1492", which was shown on the TV show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, on November 29, 2016.
He is the husband of Jewish educator Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox and father of three children, Akiva Fox, Leora Koller-Fox, and Ezra Fox.

Selected publications